I haven't read Rosenberg's essays at MyDD about Authoritarianism yet, but just wanted to say that John W. Dean did some writing about it too.

In 2006, John Dean wrote a book about authoritarianism in the present day Republican Party, called “Conservatives Without Conscience”. He wrote a lot about a small subset of authoritarians, called “double highs” who test high for authoritarian traits of both followers and leaders. In the following three essays, he outlines his research and findings.

Understanding the Contemporary Republican Party: Authoritarians Have Taken Control [1 0f 3]

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20070905.html

Why Authoritarians Now Control the Republican Party: The Rise of Authoritarian Conservatism [2 of 3]

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=/dean/20070921.html

The Impact of Authoritarian Conservatism On American Government [3 of 3] http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20070925.html

In 2007, Dean interviewed Bob Altemeyer, who had done decades of research on the topic and had recently written about Tom Delay’s new autobiography, “No retreat, No Surrender”.

Evidence of Tom DeLay's Authoritarianism:

A Question-and-Answer Session with Dr. Bob Altemeyer About DeLay's New Autobiography. http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20070406.html

Q [J Dean]: But isn't DeLay deluding himself too?

A [Altemeyer]: Authoritarian leaders who have a fundamentalist religious outlook, as Tom DeLay does, show many of the same traits that their followers do, including having highly compartmentalized minds. That means many of their ideas remain largely unconnected, as though they were stored in separate boxes. Beliefs and attitudes and behaviors that contradict each other coexist because they're never "in play" at the same time. This leads authoritarians to inconsistency, self-blindness, double standards, and hypocrisy--as research has uncovered time after time.

Altemeyer published an on-line book explaining his research and conclusions, called The Authoritarians. Link:

http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/

From the introduction [emphasis mine]:

Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want--which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal. In my day, authoritarian fascist and authoritarian communist dictatorships posed the biggest threats to democracies, and eventually lost to them in wars both hot and cold. But authoritarianism itself has not disappeared, and I’m going to present the case in this book that the greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation.

I am reminded of the Bertrand Russell quote:

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

bernbart: "I was a card carrying member of the ACLU, but they have taken on cases outside of their orignial goals of protecting the civil liberties of U.S. citizens.

I look at this differently. By taking on the Jeppesen Dataplan case, the ACLU is trying to protect the civil liberities of U.S. citizens"...including me. We have a right to know what our government is doing in our name. I think that is what John Adams is saying in the following:

Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.

John Adams*, Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

You do not have the "time" to give to the Obama administration...it's not yours to give. They wanted the job; they had time to inform themselves of cases coming to court in the near future; they supposedly had ideals and the backbones to support them with. In the time you wish to give these "leaders", Binyam Mohamed, a young man who was TORTURED in our name will starve to death. I'd like him to have more time.

Today, Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler [caveat lector] takes on the "Dear Leaderization" of Obama by Bob Herbert and EJ Dionne:

And yes, Obama is truly becoming Dear in [Bob] Herbert’s new, silliest column. In the headline, he’s called “The Chess Master;” in the body of the piece, Obama is praised in the sycophantic ways which have sometimes emerged in far capitals. “He’s smart, deft, elegant and subtle,” Herbert says. He’s “responsible and mature,” “concerned not just with the short-term political realities but also the long-term policy implications."

"In Dionne’s headline, Obama is “The Fighting Conciliator.” “These are not contradictions in his character,” we’re quickly told. But then, the god-head always includes all virtues, even those which normally war with each other."

From the 10/30/06 Jane Mayer "New Yorker" article:

A former Jeppesen employee, who asked not to be identified, said recently that he had been startled to learn, during an internal corporate meeting, about the company’s involvement with the rendition flights. At the meeting, he recalled, Bob Overby, the managing director of Jeppesen International Trip Planning, said, “We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights—you know, the torture flights. Let’s face it, some of these flights end up that way.” The former employee said that another executive told him, “We do the spook flights.” He was told that two of the company’s trip planners were specially designated to handle renditions. He was deeply troubled by the rendition program, he said, and eventually quit his job. He recalled Overby saying, “It certainly pays well. They”—the C.I.A.—“spare no expense. They have absolutely no worry about costs. What they have to get done, they get done.”

I guess Civil Libertarians are just...quaint.